


Neathy Morsels

by sharkie



Series: broken crown [9]
Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar, Sunless Sea
Genre: 3 Sentence Ficathon, Angst, Gen, Humor, Other, wild mass guessing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-19 10:38:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 1,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17599721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkie/pseuds/sharkie
Summary: Fills for the 3 Sentence Ficathon on Dreamwidth. (Table of contents in notes.)





	1. The Dauntless Temperance Campaigner and the Implacable Detective, tarnished silver

**Author's Note:**

> Most of these fills were prompted by candlesinthewell; the crossover fill was prompted by adaeze! 
> 
> [Brackets] means I chose the characters for 'any' prompts. 
> 
> **Chapter One:** [The Dauntless Temperance Campaigner and the Implacable Detective], tarnished silver  
>  **Chapter Two:** [The Tireless Mechanic and the Genial Magician], a Mirrorcatch Box Full of Very Angry Dream-Snakes  
>  **Chapter Three:** Player, subjecting the Empress's Court to a hundred and fifty tiger ballets in a row  
>  **Chapter Four:** Sinning Jenny, unexpected skills  
>  **Chapter Five:** [None], [Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell], subterranean rivers  
>  **Chapter Six:** [Inhabitants of Pigmote Isle], you appear to have purchased an extraordinary number of weasels  
>  **Chapter Seven:** [Player, Majestic Pleasure Yacht, Polythreme Steamer], unusual love stories  
>  **Chapter Eight:** [The Masters of the Bazaar], Neathy coffee shop AU  
>  **Chapter Nine:** [The Old Man in Vienna and Original Character - proxies for the White and Sol], Neathy coffee shop AU

Round and round goes the Campaigner's handkerchief, in circles as wide and frantic as her eyes. There _is_ fight left in the old girl, though perhaps as arbitrary as the victor's wont - unable to process defeat, she has grabbed a random tray, trying to polish it by elbow grease alone while she watches her supporters dwindle.

"Dauntless," says the Implacable Detective, with a knowing sigh, "reflections are overrated."


	2. The Tireless Mechanic and the Genial Magician, A Mirrorcatch Box Full of Very Angry Dream-Snakes

**Overheard at Zee: I Have Had It with These Motherf_ck_ng Snakes in This Motherf_ck_ng Box**

THE TIRELESS MECHANIC: Er, look, I know you're still upset, but the Captain just dumped this on me so I'd appreciate it if you could give me a hand - or hook - but please don't detach your hook and throw it at me -

THE SATISFIED MAGICIAN: Tell me, what's most cruel: using an engine to imprison a lucid monster, or to imprison an insane human?

THE TIRELESS MECHANIC: Leaving me to carry a box of lucid monsters!


	3. Player, subjecting the Empress's Court to a hundred and fifty tiger ballets in a row

Your time in the tomb-colonies taught you the mazurka and rage: thus, 'sapphires' adorn the stage in a quantity that would make Mr Stones salivate; dead-eyed dancers have donned fluffy masks and smeared themselves in red paint; the Veteran Privy Councillor is beside himself with delight at a new ballet and terrified from sitting beside the Tiger Keeper. As the chamber dims, murmurs speculate that you are punishing the Court for punishing your indiscretions, noting how you preen as you preside over the first (and likely last) performance of _Carnelian Carnage 151: Electric Cotillion._

"Yet another unholy abomination!" the Bishop of Southwark shouts at you, with the fury he typically reserves for Hell or serpents; he takes a seat anyway.


	4. Sinning Jenny, unexpected skills

In Jenny's opinion, her most admirable quality is impossible to profess in a treatise: she plays politics as a game like the Contrarian does, while fighting as bitterly as the war the Bishop plans to wage. She'd dismissed the Neddy 'analysts' with a wink and a wave and set about organising polls in neglected districts, paying little attention to the philosophers screeching in the Square of Lofty Words; some whispers were more valuable than shouting, and no matter how one beckoned and groaned, numbers were always loudest in the end. 

The official results are a vindicating shock...not really that she won, but how close her projections came to exact.


	5. Any crossover, subterranean rivers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a minor crossover with Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

Everyone knows how the Clock Tower sank into the Thames during the Fall - meanwhile, the infamous ale-house named Pineapple had partially collapsed into what had formerly been the Fleet River - indeed, the two seemed to have merged, as Heaven onto Earth after the end times, or the sewers onto Hell right now. 

Business had been a struggle for the first few years; however, younger Londoners had noted Pineapple's charming resemblance to a tomb-colonist battling a Zee monster, pinched their noses, and accepted fungal interpretations of ale. Ruins belong to the Raven King, even a mile underground, but he would need to wrest these particular ruins from an unnervingly adaptable proprietor and a horde of damp, drunk journalists. 


	6. Inhabitants of Pigmote Isle, you appear to have purchased an extraordinary number of weasels

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't stick to three sentences for this one, but in my defense, the prompt revolved around weasels.

_Excerpts from The Book of Tails: O Happy Mustelidae_

I. Do you recall how they came to that place? And the Hairless Adviser docked and we opened our gates? "Weasels are not rodents - why bring four hundred to Pigmote Isle?" The human coughed and persisted in denial.

II-III. _[These pericope about naturalization have been lost to the ages. Some versions may persist in weasels' 'oral history'. Unfortunately, in addition to their aversion to music, weasels are not terribly talkative, unlike SOME INHABITANTS.]_

IV. Do you recall how they came to that place? And demanded tribute for sharing vague nautical space? Rats and cavies [ _alt. source:_ cavies and rats] compromised and mourned independence. Weasels lost patience and went for the invaders' ankles. [ _Did you really try to rhyme 'independence' with 'ankles'? I mean really?_ ]

V. [...] "We will accept roughly four hundred more weasels." [...]


	7. Player and Majestic Pleasure Yacht and Polythreme Steamer, unusual love stories

You’d expected a so-called pleasure yacht to be more boisterous, really - it glides across the screaming waves of the Sea of Voices, silent as a Mutersalted throat, uncaring of ropes uncoiling and hissing like snakes or the drunken ravings of your wine glasses attempting mutiny - no, the first sound you hear the yacht make is a sonorous note like a hum when you both spot a copper-burnished steamer chugging around. 

Unlike past encounters with Polythreme vessels, this particular steamer keeps its distance, so far that you could question if it noticed you at all; it coasts aimlessly, its engine just a hint of a purr, prow lights low and luminescent - and you're nearly knocked to the deck by the yacht's wheel spinning out of your control as it veers in the steamer's direction at a speed that would be labelled a sprint if only it had legs. Well...you've navigated these choppy waters before, but this was certainly an unexpected ship.


	8. The Masters of the Bazaar, Neathy coffee shop AU

Mr Straw only has to write names on cups, yet he despises his job with a passion other people dedicate to hobbies: the Bazaarbucks manager is perpetually locked in the back room, crying as she eats sugar cubes directly from the box; their de facto substitute manager, Mr Coffee, doesn’t need sugar in order to be a giggly, shambling disaster; incidentally, Mr Sugar hates the manager and Mr Coffee; Mr Receipts thinks his machine is a typewriter with a built-in printer and uses it to write explicit stories about Mr Coffee and Mr Sugar; Mr Roast tries to forge extensions of their current lease; Mr Coins hoards change like a sticky piggy bank (and is only slightly more communicative); Mr Cake collects pay for himself and ‘Mr Pie’; Mr Napkins is the reason why they need so many napkins; and Mr Cups keeps complaining about drawing the short end of the stick in this universe, whatever that means.

They don’t talk about what happened to Mr Drunken - or is that Mr Drank - or Mr Has Been Drunk - it Used to Be and it’s definitely not Mr Dranken - look, they couldn’t talk about him even if they wanted to. 

Worst of all, February of the Calendar Cafe visits to stand in front of the counter and drink ‘deconstructed coffee’ from a series of brandless styrofoam cups until Mr Straw chases her out with a broom; Mr Coffee cheers and Mr Receipts gurgles in agreement as he frantically bangs out a new story. 


	9. The Old Man in Vienna and Original Character, Neathy coffee shop AU

“I did receive your proposal, my dear,” drawls the Old Man, stirring his void-black coffee for what feels like the millionth time, “but perhaps you’ll forgive me for demurring while we’re face to face - as they will say, the medium is the message, and even in stunned silence your courier spoke louder than years of correspondence...you told me something with this choice, yes, but also the choice before, not so easily buried by additional experiments...since you picked this fool yet again, you can wait a little longer, can’t you?”

The Solitary Scientist blinks at his inconstant companion with eyes whiter and waterier than his own forgotten latte, hands quaking from excessive caffeine and days, months, eternities of expectation - perhaps he deserves the agony, for drinking from different cups, for indulging unusual tastes in darker establishments then assuming he could scamper back to the welcoming light of Vienna - but thirst sharper than hunger urged his latest return, and he is past the point of shame for his treacheries, because no judgement could be worse than another minute of watching the Old Man pour too much cream into what they had once brewed together.   

The Old Man takes a sip without pleasure and utters the wrong three words, like he always does, damning in dismissiveness: “You’ll survive, Sol.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter that warrants the 'wild mass guessing' tag.


End file.
